“60 -minute” long -standing producer Lowell Bergman said that $ 16 million in paramount with President Donald Trump was “worse” than the similar situation that CBS News has found excessive coverage of the tobacco industry in the 1990s.
“We are in a truly dark moment, when absurd prosecution and huge sums of money come together to harm the public interest,” Bergman told the New York Times on Monday.
Bergman said he thought that Trump’s trial against Paramount was “even lower” than the trial that the president had filed against ABC and George Stephanopoulos, which was settled for $ 15 million at the end of last year.
Stephanopoulos had repeatedly declared that Trump had been tried “rape” in the civil affair that E. Jean Carroll brought against him. In fact, Trump was tried responsible for sexual abuse, which carries a different definition in New York, where the case took place.
“A reasonable jury could interpret Stephanopoulos’ statements as defamatory,” said judge Magistrate Reid last year. “Stephanopoulos declared 10 times a jury – or jury – had found the applicant responsible for rape.”
The judge’s comments, coupled with the fear that Florida jury, will grant Trump more than the $ 15 million he finally received, Disney pushed to settle.
Bergman said on Monday that ABC had “capitulated” Trump – and Paramount followed by last week with his own regulation.
“Each legal expert thought it was a kind of nonsense, right? It is nonsense,” said Bergman about Trump’s trial against Paramount. “This is done to intimidate, and therefore the result will be that you have a dispute, and it becomes devouring when you are in the middle.”
Trump initially continued paramount for $ 20 billion on how “60 minutes” published an interview with Kamala Harris last year, arguing that it was “false advertising” and falsification of the elections. The president’s lawyers later argued that the segment had caused him “mental anxiety”.
A settlement was concluded last week, with payment including “costs and costs of the complainants” as well as a donation which will be allocated to a “future presidential library”. Paramount has also said that “in the future, 60 minutes” will publish interview transcriptions with the US presidential candidates eligible after these interviews were disseminated, subject to editors as required for legal or national problems. »»
Bergman added that he thought that the colony was a bigger smear from CBS inheritance than when the lawyers of the network blocked a “60 -minute” interview with Jeffrey Wigand, a Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company’s denunciator. The interview finally took place for months later, after the Wall Street Journal reported on the allegations of Wigand against the tobacco industry – which finally served as a drama in the political thriller of Michael Mann in 1999 “The Insider”, which featured Al Pacino playing Bergman.
“It is not like a case involving tobacco and the pressure that was decreasing was easy to see where it came from,” said Bergman. “It is the president of the United States, and that unprecedented in the history of this country.”
Bergman added that journalists must be “a little depressed” on what the future has in store for the profession.
“The fact is that anyone working at 60 minutes” from now on must be concerned about what will be authorized on the antenna, “said Bergman.
Listen to Bergman’s full interview on “The Daily” here.
